Vassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery
his presence had occasioned, got up from the table
after Kitty, and watching her with smiling and admiring
eyes, he followed her.

Levin saw that look. He turned white, and for
a minute he could hardly breathe. “How
dare he look at my wife like that!” was the
feeling that boiled within him.

“Tomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,”
said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair, and again
crossing his leg as his habit was.

Levin’s jealousy went further still. Already
he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by
his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide
them with the conveniences and pleasures of life....
But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable
inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun,
and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.

Happily for Levin, the old princess cut short his
agonies by getting up herself and advising Kitty to
go to bed. But even at this point Levin could
not escape another agony. As he said good-night
to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her
hand, but Kitty, reddening, drew back her hand and
said with a naive bluntness, for which the old princess
scolded her afterwards:

“We don’t like that fashion.”

In Levin’s eyes she was to blame for having
allowed such relations to arise, and still more to
blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like
them.

“Why, how can one want to go to bed!”
said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who, after drinking several
glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most charming
and sentimental humor. “Look, Kitty,”
he said, pointing to the moon, which had just risen
behind the lime trees —­“how exquisite!
Veslovsky, this is the time for a serenade.
You know, he has a splendid voice; we practiced songs
together along the road. He has brought some
lovely songs with him, two new ones. Varvara
Andreevna and he must sing some duets.”

When the party had broken up, Stepan Arkadyevitch
walked a long while about the avenue with Veslovsky;
their voices could be heard singing one of the new
songs.

Levin hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair
in his wife’s bedroom, and maintained an obstinate
silence when she asked him what was wrong. But
when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the
question: “Was there perhaps something you
disliked about Veslovsky?”—­it all
burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated
himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated
him all the more.